Part 13

1

One thing at a time, Jonnie told himself. Do each thing properly. Each one as it comes up and each one in its turn. He had read that in a book from the man-library. He had been looking for cures for radiation and he found some. And he’d also found a book about how to handle confusion. It came from too many things at once. And that was certainly happening now! The drone, the possibility of a Psychlo counterattack, the outcome of the compound battle still in question. No reports yet of the attacks on other minesites. One could easily get confused, make a mistake, even panic. Stay calm. One thing at a time.

Dancer had been racing flat-out southward. That was not the right thing to do. He could founder her. He began to alternate a trot with a run. She was breathing better. The light was failing. Something as silly as a tripped horse could wreck everything. Trot, run, trot, run. Twenty miles. They would make it.

He had a mine radio in his pocket, small by Psychlo standards. At ten miles he began to call Glencannon, Thor’s pilot. Jonnie spoke into the mike as he rode.

At about eleven miles, Glencannon’s voice came back. “Is that you, MacTyler?” The voice sounded a bit weak.

“Can you see a running horse from where you are?” said Jonnie.

There was a long pause. Then, “Yes, you’re about three miles northeast of me. You got Terl?”

“Yes, but he’s all tied up at the moment.”

There was a silence and then a short, barking laugh. Some of the tension had gone out of Glencannon’s voice when he spoke next: “What was he after up there?”

Long story. No time now. Just be calm. Jonnie said aloud, “The girls are safe. Thor is hurt but all right.”

A sigh of relief at the other end.

“Can you still pilot a plane?” said Jonnie.

Pause. “My ribs are a bit caved in and I have a twisted ankle. That’s what’s taking so long getting back to the compound. But yes, MacTyler, of course I can still pilot a plane.”

“Keep traveling toward the compound. Have a light ready to flash. I’ll send a mine car for you. They’ll need air cover.”

“I have a light. I’m sorry about the air cover.”

“It was my fault,” said Jonnie. “Good luck.”

Dancer alternately trotted and ran. Keep calm. Things were not hopeless. They had a fighting chance. There were bright spots. They had agreed not to blow up the whole compound. The historian wanted the library, Angus wanted the machine shops. They evidently hadn’t sent any radioactive bullets into the domes. Except for the drone and its escort, they still apparently had air control.

At five and a half miles, he began calling Robert the Fox at the compound, hoping somebody was monitoring the mine radio. The schoolmaster answered; Jonnie was surprised, for there were several classified as noncombatants: the parson, the old women, the historian and the schoolmaster. Jonnie shortly heard a relieved Robert the Fox.

“The girls are safe,” said Jonnie. There was a pause at the other end as Robert the Fox apparently passed the word along. When the mike opened next from that end, Jonnie heard some cheering in the background. The news was evidently popular.

“We’re holding out here,” said Robert the Fox. “I have to talk to you about something when you get here, but not on this open line.”

Dancer skirted a clump of trees. It was getting pretty dark.

“Those apes can’t talk English,” said Jonnie.

“No matter, still can’t talk about it. When will you be here?”

“About fifteen minutes,” said Jonnie.

“Come in through the ravine to the north. There’s a lot of heavy return fire near the compound.”

“Right,” said Jonnie. “Are the planes okay?”

“We pulled them back to better cover in the ravine. We don’t have pilots.”

“I know. Listen now. Have somebody put the following items in one plane: warm clothing, a robe, mittens for me, something to eat; some plain, nonradioactive limpet mines; an assault rifle, an air mask with plenty of air bottles—I’ll be flying at one hundred fifty thousand feet.”

There was a silence at the other end and Jonnie prompted: “Got that?”

“Yes,” said Robert the Fox. “It will be done.” He certainly didn’t sound very eager.

“Send out a couple of mine cars,” said Jonnie. He gave the locations. “Better send a man or two to help bring in Terl.”

“Terl?” said Robert the Fox.

“It’s the naked truth,” said Jonnie. “Get that plane ready. I’ll be taking off just as soon as I arrive.”

A silence. Then, “Will do.” He went off the air.

About five minutes later, a mine car passed him going north in the twilight. It was the parson, one of the old women and a Scot with his arm in a sling. The parson raised his hand in a benediction—no, it was a salute! They were off to get Thor and the girls and Terl. A great length of hoist chain was flying out behind the mine car. Jonnie glanced back. The old woman was carrying a blast rifle.

The sound of the fire exchange was getting loud. The spray of the fire system was shooting two hundred feet in the air. Under it winked the blue green of blast rifles. The stuttering orange flashes of assault weapons were plainer in the floodlights that were on all over the compound.

Jonnie sped Dancer down into the opening of the ravine and pulled to a halt beside the two remaining planes. Streaks of blast rifle shots laced the sky above their heads. The horse was blowing heavily, covered with lather, but not foundered. One thing at a time, Jonnie told himself. You can catch the drone.

2

Robert the Fox had his old cape thrown over his antiradiation battle dress. His grizzled hair was singed on one side. His face was composed but there was a hint of concern. He grabbed Jonnie’s wrist and gave it a hearty shake of welcome.

Jonnie looked at the singed hair. “How are casualties?”

“Light,” said Robert the Fox. “Surprisingly light. They don’t want to show themselves to us. It impeded their aim. And it’s like fighting in a rainstorm. Look, you’re not wearing antiradiation—”

“That water is washing radiation away as fast as you fire it in,” said Jonnie. “I have something to do. There’s no breathe-gas in that drone. I don’t need radiation cover.”

“Jonnie, can’t that drone wait until the minesites have been flattened? It will take the drone up to eighteen hours to get where it’s going overseas. We tracked it on the search equipment of this plane. Which is to say, we tracked the escort. The drone has wave cancellers.”

Jonnie opened the plane door. It was all ready. There was bread and meat on the seat. An old woman popped up beside him and handed him a cup of steaming herb tea that smelled suspiciously of whiskey. When he looked at her, questioning her presence in this battle zone, she said, “They can’t eat bullets!” and laughed a cackling laugh.

Robert’s hand was detaining him. “We still have radio silence successfully in.” They had agreed to give the remote minesite attack pilots twelve hours of radio silence to let them finish off the outlying areas with total surprise if possible. “That’s more than they need. We can shorten it and they can converge on that drone—”

“It’s headed for Scotland,” said Jonnie. “That’s its first stop.”

“I know.”

Jonnie finished off the hot drink and started to climb into the plane.

The detaining hand again. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you.” When Jonnie had stopped to listen, he continued, “We may not have hit Psychlo.”

“I know,” said Jonnie.

“That means that we may need all the planes and equipment we can get here. They’re in hangars under us. We don’t have men enough to take the place by assault and we mustn’t destroy it.”

“You can work this out with Glencannon. You’ll have a pilot in half an hour or so. You can bash it in from the air.” He made to get into the plane and again Robert’s hand was on his sleeve.

“We had a funny thing happen, just before sunset,” said Robert. “A tank surrendered!”

Jonnie stepped back onto the ground. He might as well spend this time getting into the warm clothing needed at high altitudes and he proceeded to do so. “Go on.”

Robert took a deep breath, but before he went on a runner came up to tell him the historian had delivered a new load of ammunition from the Academy. Robert told him to see it was passed out. The blast fire needles continued to lash overhead in the now quite dark night.

“The tank is a ‘Bash Our Way to Glory.’ It’s down there at the other end of the ravine. Oh, don’t be alarmed. It’s in our hands. It came out of the garage port and came right straight toward us. We hit it with bazookas and they didn’t even dent it. But it didn’t fire back. It went right straight down to the end of the ravine there and threw out an intercom through an atmosphere lock and said it wanted to talk to the ‘Hockner leader.’ It wanted a guarantee of safety in return for cooperation.”

Jonnie was getting into the warm boots. “Well, go on.”

“It’s a kind of weird scene,” continued Robert. “When they got a safety guarantee they came out of the tank. They said they were the Chamco brothers. We got interrogation going. They said they knew Terl had sold out. It seems there was a mine manager named Char, a friend of theirs, who turned up missing at the firing. Well, this Char told the Chamco brothers that there’d been a murder. That Terl had murdered the head of the planet so he could appoint a new Planet Head named Ker. And that Ker, this afternoon, had denied them ammunition for the tank. The Chamcos claim Terl and Ker have sold out to some race called the ‘Hockners of Duraleb’ and even launched the drone to wipe out the other minesites.”

“I suppose it’s mostly correct,” said Jonnie. “Except the parts about the Hockners and the drone. The Psychlos have a lot of enemies, but according to their histories they defeated the Hockners a couple of hundred years ago. Listen, Sir Robert, in all due respect, I’ve got to be going!”

“There’s more,” said Robert the Fox. “They haven’t got tank and plane fuel in there, and we’ve cut down four sorties of theirs to get to the fuel and ammunition dump way over there. But they have plenty of blast rifle ammunition. We don’t have men enough for an assault—”

“What else?” said Jonnie. “Sounds like good news, not bad.”

“Well, it’s not all good news. It seems there’s sixteen levels of compound under us. Each level stretches for acres. Quarters, shops, garages, hangars, offices, workrooms, libraries, supply warehouses—”

“I didn’t know it was that much, but that’s not bad news either.”

“Wait. If that thing were to be hit with radiation this whole assault force would be blown to bits. We’re fighting on a loaded bomb. We must save those planes and equipment if we have to defend Earth. And we need them for reconstruction if we really did blow up Psychlo.”

“You’ll have air support shortly,” said Jonnie. “You can withdraw—”

“Well, the Chamco brothers say they know what will happen in there. That we’ll flood the place with air! They said they know how ‘us Hockners’ took the Duraleb system back. They say there aren’t enough breathe-gas masks and vials but the recirculating system has plenty. These Chamco brothers are design and maintenance engineers. They promised to help us if we paid them. They say the whole planet has been on half-pay and no bonuses. And they don’t want to be killed in an ‘air flood’ as they called it.”

Jonnie had on the warm clothing and was finishing a sandwich of oat bread and dried venison. “Sir Robert, as soon as you get air support you can plan something—”

“The Chamco brothers told us the breathe-gas recirculating system was exterior to the base and air-cooled, and they were tricked into admitting all one had to do was shoot up the intake pipes from the cooling system and the pumps would fill the whole compound with air.”

“You got it all solved,” said Jonnie.

“Yes, but we need the intakes shot up at long range from the air.”

“That shouldn’t take long. As soon as Glencannon gets here—”

“Well, I think you ought to do it,” said Robert. “It’s not very dangerous and if you fire from about a half-mile off—”

“I can do that as I take off.”

“But you should come back down here to verify—”

Suddenly Jonnie knew what Robert was up to. Robert the Fox was going to wait until all planes could converge on that drone. And that was taking a chance. The planes to other minesites might be in trouble themselves. “Sir Robert, are you trying to keep me from making a single-handed attack on that drone?”

The veteran spread his hands. “Jonnie, laddie, you’ve done too much already to get yourself killed now!” His eyes were pleading.

Jonnie swung up into the plane.

“Then I’m coming with you!” said Robert the Fox.

“You’re going to stay right here and direct this assault!”

A mine car ricocheted into the end of the ravine and came to a halt. The driver grabbed an assault rifle and ran up to the lines to get back into the battle. Glencannon stepped down and limped over to them.

“Damn!” said Robert the Fox.

“What’s the matter?” said Glencannon, a bit taken aback with the greeting. “I’m all right. If somebody will tape up my ribs and put something around this ankle, I can fly.”

Robert the Fox put an arm around Glencannon’s shoulder. “It was something else,” he said. “I’m glad you got back alive. We’ve got a job for you. A lot of them, in fact. The snipers on the old Chinko quarters—”

“Goodbye, Sir Robert,” Jonnie said and closed the door.

“Good luck,” said Robert sadly. He knew Jonnie would suicide-crash the drone if everything else failed. He didn’t expect to see him again. Then he turned and began to issue orders to two waiting runners. He had a little trouble seeing them.

Jonnie sent the plane soaring out of the ravine, too fast to be spotted and hit, and was on his way to attempt something the combined military powers of Earth had failed to do. And on his way to do it all alone.

Waiting until the drone was—what, five hours?—from Scotland was cutting it a bit close. If attacks on it did succeed they might blow gas canisters, and a freak wind could wipe out Scotland and Sweden as well. There was much to be said for attack in force. But even that guaranteed no success. And no one had ever tried a head-on smash at the drone with a Psychlo battle plane traveling at maximum with all guns blazing at the moment of collision. As a last resort, that would destroy almost anything. He hadn’t said anything about it to Sir Robert. Surely, the old man hadn’t guessed it.

3

Dunneldeen was a very happy man. The Cornwall compound of the British Isles was dead ahead, lit up like the onetime cities must have been.

They had drawn straws for Cornwall. This was the minesite that sent out hunting parties and made it death for Scots to go south. The Psychlos at this place, over the centuries, had gunned down people beyond count just for sport on their days off. There was even a tale of a raiding party captured and tied to trees and shot tiny bit by tiny bit and man by man for eighteen agonizing days. And many tales like it.

He and his copilot Dwight had drawn the long straw to the envy of their fellow pilots. They had drilled the navigation. No Scot had ever gotten within a hundred miles of this minesite in over a thousand years and little was actually known of it, but they had absorbed what there was.

They had lain all night, quite relaxed, warmly dressed for stratosphere flying. They had heard the warning horns go for the final firing of the semiannual. They had piled into their seats, hands waiting at the consoles.

Wide-eyed and thrilled, they had watched Jonnie’s incredible sprint. Something had gone wrong as he reached the cage, and that part wasn’t so good. No rescue. But Jonnie had piled down under the edge of the bluff, safe as a wee bairn in his truckle bed before the blast rifles went.

The recoil had been a bit disconcerting, for it had slewed the plane out of position with concussion. But all was well. They had vaulted their plane into the sky on schedule. They had seen the planetwide radio towers collapse in a tangle of cables behind them, hit by both the concussion of recoil and bazooka fire. A twelve-hour radio silence had begun successfully. Ample time for the farthest minesite to be reached without any warning.

At two thousand miles an hour, one hundred thousand feet up, they had shifted the clock and come down to normal Psychlo approach levels to a nighttime minesite. There it was!

Scanners and viewscreens alight, they found no sign of hostile action, no guard planes in the air.

Lighted steam was coming out of some shafts in the hills that must be five miles deep. Smelter chimneys belched curling, green smoke. Warehouses stood in bold outline. And there were the glowing domes of the compound! Target one.

But Dunneldeen, being Dunneldeen, was quick to take advantage of sudden opportunities, even when they were not quite specified in planning.

The silly apes down there lit up the whole landing area for him! It gleamed like a bloody stage. They thought he was simply some nonscheduled Psychlo flight. Bless radio silence.

And Dunneldeen saw something else. Strung on massive power poles, coming down from the north, was their power supply. And right there, in the full glare of the landing area, was the obvious master pole. The freaks cared nothing about an aerial navigation menace. It was the master pole. The lines from the north came down into it. The local light cables all routed out from it to the buildings and compound. There was a big open space for landing and takeoff in the middle of this spider’s web.

Right at the side of the landing stage was a huge wheel. Dunneldeen recognized it. The master wheel that, when spun, withdrew the master bus bar from the circuit.

By Dunneldeen’s opportunist mentality, it was simply too good to miss. Why let them have lots of light while they rushed about manning their defense weapons and trying to get out to their planes? Why not simply throw the whole thing into total chaos? And then go up and, with infrared screens, shoot the place to bits. Their own plane had a wave neutralizer, copied from one stolen from a ground car, and they could turn it on and those apes wouldn’t know what to shoot at. Further, if this battle plane took off it would seem like it was a defense plane.

Dunneldeen spoke rapidly to a startled but agreeable Dwight. Just as casually as though they were a visiting plane, they landed right beside the big wheel. Dunneldeen hitched the assault rifle strap over his shoulder, opened the door of the plane, stepped down, walked over to the bus bar wheel, and gave it its first spin.

It all went okay just up to that point. But now a Psychlo in a little guardhouse they had not spotted, only ten feet from that bus bar, stepped out and stared at Dunneldeen.

“The Tolneps!” screamed the guard.

Before Dunneldeen could get the assault rifle into position the guard had closed the door and hit a siren. A bullhorn opened up enough to blast one’s eardrums in. “Tolnep attack! All posts! Tolneps! Gun positions!”

Regardless of what Tolneps might be, Dunneldeen spun the bus bar wheel so fast it screamed. He realized then why it was so close to the landing stage. They darkened the place for attack precautions. And had a guardhouse right handy to do it.

Dunneldeen raced back to the plane. He dove in. Dwight’s assault rifle opened up as guards boiled out of a stairwell. They dissolved into luminous green flashes.

The battle plane soared. Dunneldeen threw on the wave neutralizer and infrared screens.

They reverted to plan.

With guns set to “No Flame, Maximum Concussion,” they roared across the compound.

The domes squashed like punctured balloons.

They raced across the lines of warehouses and knocked their roofs flat.

For good measure they made another pass, this time dropping non-radiation, antipersonnel bombs.

One gun opened up at them and the plane took a jolt. They flashed down and squashed the gun with a single blast.

And that was the end of the base. The Psychlo Intergalactic Mining Company did not believe in lavishing money on safety equipment in any department, apparently. And hadn’t Jonnie said something about Terl calling in all the armaments from these bases?

From what they could gather, standing by way up in the air, the creatures in the compound had been unable to get the masks on before the domes were smashed, for there certainly wasn’t any mob coming out.

They hung around for a while, occasionally knocking out an isolated vehicle and a stray guard.

It really was quiet down there after that.

Then they saw something on their radar screen. It was an incoming transport. Abruptly they recalled transport plane engines leaving after the incoming firing. This thing had been slowpoking its way home and they had passed it. Good!

Dunneldeen, much to Dwight’s dismay, landed beside the bus bar and turned it on.

They just sat there. The landing lights were now on. Any Psychlo employee left alive was not concentrating on coming out.

The transport plane landed. The Psychlos got out, fooled around with baggage. Then the pilot got out. The Psychlos walked in a mob toward the compound. Then they began to feel something was wrong and stopped. The Psychlo pilot reached for his belt gun.

Dunneldeen and Dwight cut them down with assault rifles.

Dunneldeen flew Dwight over to the fuel dump. They knew what fuel cartridge the transport took, for it was a duplicate of the plane that had brought Jonnie to Scotland. Dwight got the fuel cartridges. Dunneldeen brought him back to the transport plane. Dwight took the old cartridges out and put new ones in. Dunneldeen shot a guard car that had survived and came racing toward them. It blew up.

Dunneldeen got into the air. Dwight flew the transport up. Dunneldeen shot the master power pole to bits in a fanfare of sparks and flashes.

Seeing that Dwight was well clear, Dunneldeen flew to a point about ten feet above the breathe-gas dump. He dropped a low-yield, lead-shielded, time-fused radioactive mine on it. He soared up and the dump roared in a lovely green blue flash.

He again checked to see where Dwight had gotten to, saw he was safe. Dunneldeen soared to ten thousand feet, nosed the plane over, sighted, and fired at the explosives dump. It went up like a miniature volcano. Absolutely beautiful.

He dropped back and verified that the compound had not exploded. This was part of their orders. The machinery and stored planes were apparently intact.

With no atmosphere to breathe and no fuel to fly, with ninety percent of its personnel probably dead, the minesite in Cornwall was a write-off. That paid for a lot of crimes.

Dunneldeen fell in beside the transport. “What’s a Tolnep?” asked Dunneldeen. Dwight didn’t know either, but Dunneldeen supposed he did look strange in a Chinko air mask and U.S. Air Force stratosphere flying gear.

They had already agreed on a new and wonderful plan Dunneldeen had thought up. They had almost six hours of radio silence left. Orders complete and time on their hands.

Dunneldeen was related to the chief of Clanfearghus, and besides, there was a lass he had not seen for nearly a year.

They hoped the other fourteen minesite attack planes had done as well. Of course, perhaps not with the same style.

They headed for Scotland.

4

Zzt had sunk into deep apathy.

The gas drone roared on, deafening, cold and dark.

That silly dimwit Nup!

Zzt had thought at first that the engine sounds he heard were just some rattles in this old relic, but after a while his trained ear could pick the sound out separately from the din in here. He listened in different parts of the cheerless drone and then at the flapping door. It was the Mark 32! The Mark 32, “Hit ’Em Low, Kill ’Em,” heavy armored ground strafer.

Nup was flying escort to the drone?

Zzt had puzzled and puzzled on it and in fact had done little else. At first Zzt was all hope. He thought Nup had followed him out of the hangar intending to lower a ladder to the open door and snatch him out of here. But Nup seemed to be utterly unaware of the fact that there was an open door and was flying on the opposite side of the drone from it.

True, Zzt had not briefed him at all. The busted lamp bulb had mostly been talking about Bolbods and rumors in Psychlo that they were the next target. What nonsense! Zzt went over it carefully. No, in the rush of trying to get out and at those attacking Tolneps with a ground strafer, he had simply raced around asking whether anyone had been checked out on a Mark 32 and had slammed Nup into the copilot seat and then had had to go attend to that drone.

He dimly remembered his last words to Nup. They were “Come on!” And he had been surprised when Nup hadn’t run after him to the drone.

Instead of mopping up the Tolneps, Nup was out there flying escort in a ground strafer. He might have been checked out, but he certainly didn’t know what it was for. Why, with that Mark 32 he could batter down a whole city! And nothing could penetrate its hide. It was a support plane, a support plane for ground troops. No ground fire could touch it. No interceptor ships could even scratch its hide. And what was Nup doing with it? Riding escort to a drone that needed none. Zzt got bitter. Damn Terl and damn Nup!

Then as the huge drone with its deafening engines rolled along to the devils-knew-what destination, Zzt began to realize that Nup didn’t know he was aboard!

A bit later, when he looked at his watch, Zzt realized that that Mark 32 was going to run out of fuel. Wherever they were in this dark night, that Mark 32 was a write-off. He hadn’t put fuel in it for such a trip because he didn’t have cartridges, and a Mark 32 had no great range anyway, being intended for local use.

Well, Zzt had plenty of breathe-gas. He had a gun, he had a wrench.

For a while he monkeyed around with the preset box armor, thinking he might be able to open it and change it. But without keys or the means to make them, not even a piece of blast artillery could open it. When they said “armored” they sure meant these damned old gas drones.

So he had finally slumped down on the cold plates in the forward end of the ship and in apathy decided to last it out. In a day or two or three this thing would land. There was nothing in it to cushion anyone from the rough landings these made, but Zzt imagined he would survive it.

Just sit and wait. That was all he could do.

Damn Terl! Damn Nup! Damn the company!

And all on half-pay and no bonuses.

5

Jonnie was searching for the drone.

Every viewscreen was flashing.

Down below the cold Arctic spread out, visible in the screens, invisible to direct sight. He remembered it from his last trip across it. A forbidding array. Once down in it you were dead, if not from direct cold on an ice floe, then from immersion in those waters.

As nearly as he could judge, the gas drone was somewhere ahead only a few minutes now. Shortly he should have it on his screen.

He was a little bit disturbed about the girls and Thor. He had not seen them on his screens as he went by. Of course he was by then very high. The spot of light he saw might be their fire, but it also might be the planes still burning. He had wasted too much time already and help was on the way to them. He remembered their numb faces when they realized he was leaving them there. But they must be all right. Probably they were at the Academy or the compound by now. Maybe the parson had been driving very fast. A mine ground car could do over sixty on rough terrain.

He hoped the other planes had reached the minesites and done their jobs. There was still five hours of radio silence yet to go. He wished he could open up on this radio and yell to them, “Hey, anybody that’s done in his minesite, get up here to such and such coordinates and help blast this confounded drone.” But he didn’t dare. It might cost some of them their lives by alerting their targets. They all had extra fuel and then some. They all had spare ammunition. But if any had had to delay or were waiting for an optimal moment to pounce on a minesite and he opened up, it could throw their lives away. He wasn’t about to kill any Scots to save his own hide. When radio silence opened and Robert didn’t hear from him, Robert would converge them to handle the drone. Late, maybe, but a second chance. He hoped it wouldn’t come to that, for their friends in Scotland would be endangered.

Maybe he was searching for something that was wave cancelled. That escort ship was his hope. Maybe it had peeled off or gone somewhere else. Its blip should be visible!

Ah, now. What was that tiny spark of green on the viewscreen? Another iceberg? No, the height telltale read 4,223 feet. Speed? Speed?

Three hundred two miles per hour!

He had the escort on the screen.

His gloved hands danced on the console. He braked down from hypersonic, dropping abruptly to five thousand feet in a descent as fast as a firing rocket. He cushioned at the bottom, feeling a trifle squashed for a moment. Easy, take it easy. Size up this escort.

He got it bright and clear in infrared. There was the drone beside it. One thing at a time. This escort was first target.

What was that plane? He had never seen anything like it before. Lowslung, flat, minimum skids . . . it looked like it was mainly armor!

Suddenly he realized that his guns might not even dent it. He had seen a tank bazooka flash against its side without affecting it in the least. He had a sinking feeling. Not only was the drone renowned as impregnable, but here was an escort ship that—

His mind raced with possibilities. Robert the Fox sometimes said, “When you only have two inches of claymore, use ten feet of guile.” What did that escort know about him?

He reached for the local command radio switch. The range was only about twenty miles.

A torrent of angry Psychlo words hit him: “It’s about time somebody showed up! I should have been relieved of this job hours ago! What kept you?” Angry. Very angry!

Jonnie opened his transmit switch. He lowered the pitch of his voice as much as possible. “How are things?”

“The drone’s all right and why shouldn’t it be? I’ve been escorting it, haven’t I? You certainly run a messed-up planet here! It’s not like this on Psychlo! I should hope not! You’re late! What’s your name?”

Jonnie hastily dredged up a name that was common to twenty percent of the Psychlos. “Snit. Could I ask who I’m talking to?”

“Nup, Executive Administrator Nup! Use ‘Your Executiveship’ when you address me! Crap planet.”

“Did you arrive recently, Your Executiveship?” asked Jonnie.

“Just today, Snit. And how am I greeted? With a crummy Bolbod attack anyone could handle! Wait,” suspiciously, “you have a very strange accent. Like . . . like . . . yes, like a Chinko instruction disk! That’s what it is. You’re not a Bolbod, are you?” The click of firing buttons pulled off safety to standby.

“I was born here,” said Jonnie truthfully.

A sharp nasty laugh. “Oh, a colonial!” Silence for a moment. “Were you briefed on this mission?”

“A little bit, Your Executiveship. But orders have been changed. That’s what I was sent to tell you.”

“You’re not relieving me?” Very hostile.

“The destination has been changed!” said Jonnie. “There’s radio silence. They had to send me with the word.”

“Radio silence?”

“Planetary wide, Your Executiveship.”

“Ah, then it is a Bolbod attack! They operate everything on radio! I knew it.”

“I’m afraid so, Your Executiveship.”

“Well, if you’re not going to relieve me, what am I expected to do? I am almost out of fuel! Where’s the nearest minesite?”

Jonnie thought very fast.

“Your Executiveship, the orders were that if you were almost out of fuel”— Good Lord, where could he send him? That Mark 32 was the only thing that one could home in on in a search!—“I was to tell you to land with magnetic grapnels on top of the drone . . . right at the front end.”

“What?” Incredulous.

“Then drop off when we come close to the next minesite. You’ve got a map there?”

“No. I haven’t got a map. You run things very badly on this planet. Not like Psychlo. It should be reported.”

“There’s an attack on.”

“Nothing can dent this plane. It’s a ground strafer. I don’t know why it’s being sent on escort.”

“How much fuel do you have, Your Executiveship?”

A pause. Then, “Crap! It’s only ten minutes’ worth! You almost killed me with your lateness.”

“Well, just land on the extreme front end of the drone—”

“Why the front end? I should land in the middle. If I land on the front end it will unbalance the weight distribution of the drone.”

“It’s the way it’s loaded this trip. They omitted part of the load in the front. They said specifically the front end.”

“This is a pretty heavy plane!”

“Not for the drone. You better get moving, Your Executiveship. That water is cold down there. Ice, too! And you’ll need fuel to offload. It’s only a few hours to the next minesite.”

Jonnie watched his screens. He couldn’t see the plane in direct sight. With a bit of anxiety, he opened up the view to include the monstrous drone.

He felt faint with relief when the Mark 32 dove ahead, sat down on the top-front section of the drone, and put on its magnetic grips. They held!

The heat indicator of the viewscreen showed the Mark 32 had shut off its motors.

Jonnie watched. He expected the drone to nose down, possibly to crash. It did sag. Then its engines started to compensate and it rolled gently, thundering along, still going on its lethal way. Nup had landed off-center, inducing a continuous roll, right to left, left to right. It would roll to the right, and the balance motors would compensate and bring it back too far to the left, and then overcompensate in the other direction. Only about ten degrees each way. But this did not at all change the steadfast course the drone was following. A very slow roll. Was it also crabbing slightly?

6

With Nup out of the way, at least for now, Jonnie got down to the business of seeing what could be done to halt the drone.

He drew off a bit to give his screens better play on it. It looked like a derelict! Here was a mark where an atomic bomb had hit it, there was a scar where possibly a plane had crashed into it leaving the charred remnants of oil and fuel. There a row of minute dents where surface-to-air or air-to-air missiles had struck it. But such marks were notable only for their stains, not for any damage they had done.

He flew the battle plane down under it. He looked at the big skids used for parking and storing. No joy there.

He brought the battle plane alongside it again. He felt like a hummingbird flapping along with a buzzard.

Probably when the last mission of this thing was completed and it had crashed, demolishing the then-known city of Colorado Springs, the company had just let it lie there until it had built hangars and, as an afterthought, had probably flown water tanks over it and way above it and washed the radiation off of it and then stored it.

A chilling thought as to why they must have done that. Psychlos had no room for sentiment or art in any form. They would not have kept it for any other reason than that they couldn’t dismantle it on this planet. Psychlo alone would have the massive shops to do that. They certainly didn’t want it back. It had done its job. They wouldn’t leave it out where it could be measured up by some enemy agent. They had kept it because the company couldn’t destroy it on this planet. What it was built of, the devil only knew!

Well, he tried to cheer himself, Nup’s plane skids had stuck to it. These magnetic so-called skids were actually whole-molecule reorientation fields. The molecules in the surface of one substance became, with the field, comingled with the molecules of the other substance like a temporary weld. So this thing was built of molecular metal, possibly some unknown—to this planet—metal, alloyed with some other strange metal. It even could be that the combination of such metals was, while molecular, irreversible and couldn’t be melted or pounded apart once mixed. Maybe the Psychlos had something that, when certain elements were mixed together, could not then be “unmixed” by flame, electrical arcs, radiation, or anything. Maybe even laminated layers of such metals, each one protecting the one under it.

A very chilling thought. Jonnie did not consider himself even a kindergarten-level metallurgist, but he recalled the prohibition the Psychlos had of ever teaching an alien race anything about that subject. And here he was trying to solve it, flying along in the night, without texts, without a calculator, and without even the mathematics to use it if he had it.

What would destroy that drone? And before it reached even the coast of Scotland.

He had thought a Psychlo was a monster when he first saw one. Now he was really looking at a monster. An ultimate in indestructibility.

Out of the tail of his eye he thought he saw something move on the viewscreen. He looked at it closely. There it was again. A rhythmic pulse under the bottom of the drone. He counted it out. Once every twenty seconds, regular as his watch. Suddenly he realized he had been studying just one side of the drone. He guessed he was feeling a bit overwhelmed. Well! Easily remedied. He hit his console with rapid fingers and flick, he was over on the other side of the drone.

This side had been away from him when he first saw the thing from the plains after it fired. Nup had been flying on the other side also.

He trimmed in his viewscreens.

What? The huge loading door was unlatched. And since Nup had landed on the nose, making the drone roll and crab periodically, the door was swinging open and closed.

A door.

Unlatched.

He televiewed it with quivering fingers. It had the broken stub of a key in it.

He viewed the whole mammoth door. It was open when the plane rolled down on that side, then was closed by the rushing air and gravity when the plane rolled back.

Every twenty seconds.

He suddenly regretted the tenderheartedness that had caused him to refuse a companion on this voyage. It would be dangerous, but hanging from a dangling wire ladder, it would be possible to drop down and into that door. No, it would require a pilot to run the plane and somebody going into that drone who knew enough to paralyze it if possible. And he had no pilots, and Glencannon couldn’t be spared.

Open, closed, open, closed.

Size? He looked at the door. He compared his own ship’s span and depth. This ship could fly into that door! Top and bottom a very narrow squeeze. Plenty to spare on the sides.

Yikes! Fly this ship sideways at 302 miles per hour? And then in?

Well, it was standard battle tactics to fly sideways with these teleportation motor drives. There was no wing support area needed such as birds used. When you shut off these motors, the ship didn’t glide anywhere. It just dropped like a stone. It was leveled with small teleportation balance motors, not fins.

Yes, in theory one could fly sideways and then dart forward and in.

But the timing! Ouch. That rolling drone was moving the opening up and down about thirty feet each roll.

He’d try it.

But that slamming door had to be taken off first. The way it swung, it barred the available opening.

Jonnie decided he would first try to shoot the hinges off. He dropped the battle plane back, setting the firing controls to “Needle Width,” “Flame,” and “Single Shot.”

He lined up the plane and sights, fingers dancing on the console, one foot extended to the floor firing button—always hard to reach in a plane built for nine- or ten-foot-tall Psychlos. Even Ker had trouble with floor controls.

Line up, door open, hinge exposed. Stamp!

A needle of hot flame hit the hinge. It didn’t sever. The door began to swing shut again.

His local command channel burst into life. “What the crap are you doing?” cried Nup, alarmed.

“I don’t have a copilot, Your Executiveship. I have to shoot the door open to change the controls and destination.”

“Oh.” Then, as Jonnie was lining up for the next try, “You be careful of company property, Snit! Willful damage is a vaporizing offense.”

“Yes, Your Executiveship.” Jonnie fired the next try.

The hinge glowed briefly. The door hid it from view again. The door didn’t sag. Maybe the hinge was binding. Jonnie looked at the infrared target scope. Yes, there were two hinges, one up, one lower.

He lined up on the lower hinge. Door open, hinge in scope. Stamp! Flash!

The door still didn’t fall off.

Maybe if he alternated his shots, upper hinge, lower hinge, one then the other.

He drew off a bit to flex his fingers. The other scopes showed ice and sea endlessly below him. Nothing else in the sky.

Back to it. Upper. Stamp! Flash! Lower. Stamp! Flash! Over and over. But a shot possible only every forty seconds.

This was time-consuming! Well, he wasn’t too pressed for time. Not yet anyway.

Stamp! Flash! Wait. Stamp! Flash! Wait.

Those hinges would get cherry red but they didn’t sever.

Getting nowhere, Jonnie drew off. Then, with a bright inspiration, he took a position above the drone and slightly to the other side so he could fire into the back of the door as it rolled open. He changed his gun setting to “Broad,” “No Flame,” and “Continuous.”

He sighted carefully. The next time the door swung open he stamped on the firing button and sent a string of flashes against the inside of the door. It swung open. He shifted his plane over to the side gradually as he fired. Despite reverse roll, the door was forced open and then, despite a three-hundred-two-mile-an-hour rush of air, suddenly sprang back under the hammering and lay against the hull. Wide open!

Jonnie stopped firing.

The door stayed open. Wide open, pinned back to the hull.

He examined the hinges by throwing the sight to “Tele.” They were a bit twisted, probably from the shots. It was the hinges that precariously held the door open. Would it close again? Maybe. It was vibrating from wind force.

Watchfully, Jonnie drew off. His fingers raced on the console as he sought to correct for flying sideways. He got the sequence of combinations that did it. He inched the plane exactly opposite the yawning doorway.

Up went the doorway, down went the doorway. Yikes, this had to be timed!

He thought he had better just sit there and study it for a bit. He turned on the plane’s lights to get direct visual. You couldn’t do this on instruments alone.

The black pit lit up. He could see inside. Yes, there was an area just inside the door. A flat platform. Probably needed for loading canisters. Ow! Canisters were stacked just in front of that platform. Would they explode if hit in an overshoot?

He calculated the distance and combination on the console. Then, with a sudden inspiration, he braced his foot against the magnetic-grip-setting lever. The jar of any impact would cause his foot, jolted, to set the magnetic skids.

He took a deep breath. He looked around him to be sure there were no loose objects. He moved the belted revolver they had issued him so its holster wouldn’t punch him in the stomach if he jackknifed forward. The lanyard from the revolver was around his neck. He pulled it a bit to the side so it wouldn’t catch on the control console if he pitched forward, for if it did, it could choke him. He laid a soft map case on the upper part of the console in case his head hit with the sudden stop.

Jonnie took another deep breath. He adjusted his air mask.

He watched the door. His fingers dancing on the console to get in the exact position, he zeroed in on the doorway. Count, count, count. How far would the doorway move up after he started forward?

He spread four fingers of his right hand across the huge keyboard to the four buttons that would start him. He spread four fingers of his left hand across the buttons that would stop him.

Up, up, up. Right hand ready. Punch!

The battle plane stabbed into the open door.

Crunch, down with the fingers of his left hand. Stop.

Crash!

He had not quite cleared the top of the door and a wide peel of metal screeched away.

His foot was jolted on the grip lever and the grips went on.

Jonnie’s head slammed against the map case.

Lights flashed in his skull.

Blackness.

7

During all this time, Zzt had been fluctuating between hope and suspicion.

The antics of that plane puzzled him. He knew he had no friends. Who would want to rescue him? He couldn’t think of anybody. Char had been his shaftmate, and Char had vanished and was undoubtedly dead, for who would miss a chance to go home? And Char had not shown up at the firing. Terl. Probably Terl had killed him. So it was not Char. Who else was there? Nobody. So who was interested in rescuing him? It was a highly suspicious circumstance.

That dimwit Nup had apparently landed on top of the drone to keep from going down into the ice below—and it was ice; one could feel the Arctic in this awful chill. Ice felt a certain way in the atmosphere. Terrible planet. One couldn’t blame Nup for that. Common enough tactic for one plane to land on another when shot up or out of fuel, and get carried to safety. So it wasn’t any real credit to Nup to think of it. But the crazy fool had landed off-center, and it was making the drone crab but mainly roll. And that roll was making Zzt sick at his stomach.

When he realized that somebody was evidently interested in the door, he had searched in his bag for a molecular metal cutter and found to his dismay he didn’t have one. Not that it would have worked on this laminated molecular plating. But he would have tried.

Then whoever it was had let loose shots into the place.

Somebody was trying to kill him! He’d been right in believing he had no friends.

The interior had huge frames on the inside of the skin and Zzt had hastily drawn himself flat against the hull to take advantage of the projection of the wide frame.

He peered out cautiously. Then he relaxed a bit. The target was the hinges. Somebody was trying to get the door off. Zzt knew the hinges wouldn’t part, but at the same time it was interesting indeed that somebody would try to part them. Why? How come somebody wanted to remove the door? That didn’t make any sense at all.

Every mining plane, whatever else it was used for, followed a mining tradition. Every employee was basically a miner. Mining techniques, procedures and equipment were into the mining company like kerbango was into the bloodstream and far more permanently. Hoists, lifts, cable ladders, safety lines, hooks, nets . . . they even shoveled paper around with scoops that looked like mine shovels. It was totally inconceivable that that plane out there didn’t have a cable ladder and safety wires.

So why didn’t it just lower a cable ladder and safety wire to him and let him time those door swings and dart up the ladder to the plane? They could lower him a jet backpack and even pick him out of the air.

All this was so routine to Zzt that the idea of anybody having to remove a door to make it wide open was a strange precaution.

Was somebody trying to steal a canister? That was impossible. They were all locked in. Everything in this damned derelict was armored, inside and out. Such ships were hell to repair, and he had resented the time Terl had taken. You couldn’t get at anything in it. It was just a one-time-use rig, built to be expended. So nobody could steal anything here.

Were they trying to send it elsewhere? Well, you couldn’t do that without keys, and he had no keys.

So what was going on?

The battering barrage that got the door all the way open and warped it in that position made it easier to lower a cable ladder. All right! Where was the ladder and safety wire? Nothing came dangling down into the huge open maw.

Zzt had just moved forward to peek when blinding lights flashed on, throwing the interior into a blaze of dirt motes and floating rust dust shaken loose in the firing.

He heard a plane’s motor suddenly race.

He didn’t even have time to get behind the protective frame.

Before his half-blinded eyes a plane shot in the door!

The floor plates shook! Metal shrieked.

The plane had crashed on the loading stage platform directly inside the door.

Zzt stumbled backward, expecting it to blow up. But its motor suddenly died and the peculiar fang-setting-on-edge sound of molecular cohesion pierced the dying whine of components. The thing had set its skid grips with a timing and precision Zzt had never seen before.

Staggered by the concussion and already sick with the rolling, Zzt lurched to his feet. It still had its lights on. He peered through this glare to see the pilot. He couldn’t make it out. He staggered forward, hand on his belt gun. He still couldn’t see the pilot. The armored glass door . . . the pilot was sitting up slowly.

A small being! A mask! A strange fur coat collar!

Zzt let out a near hysterical shriek. “A Tolnep!”

In blind confusion, Zzt drew and fired his belt gun. He fired again and again and again.

His shots were hitting an armored window. He was trying to shoot an armored window! He was also trying to back up and get away.

The drone rolled; Zzt collided with a gas canister, tripped on its cable, started to fall, and threw out his paws to save himself. His gun went flying, hit the floor plates, slithered, and dropped out the open door into the waiting void below.

Skidding and catching his breath in sobs, Zzt got behind a distant frame to protect himself. He believed he was one dead Psychlo!

8

Jonnie came out of it. The shock of the crash had knocked him out for a moment. He guessed he was getting tired with the strain and the cold. A jolt like that shouldn’t have knocked him out.

Then he found his left knee was bruised from hitting the console, the fingernails of his left hand were bleeding from stubbing on keys, and his forehead ached. He decided it must have been a harder crash than he thought.

The magnetic grip brake was on, but peering, he was having a hard time seeing it. He took off his air mask and found that his forehead had been cut on the mask faceplate rim and the blood was getting in his eyes. He reached back and got the tail end of a mining tarpaulin and staunched the blood and wiped out the faceplate. Now he could see.

The landing had been successful. An ancient gag he had found on a cartoon card over at their base occurred to him: “A successful landing is one you can walk away from.” Well, he could walk, he hoped.

The ship was slewed. The wind pressure had come off the nose as it went in, but it was still on the tail. The tail was sticking way out of the door but was pushed over against the side of the doorframe. Was the ship hurt?

He looked around inside. The main motor housing and the two right and left balance housings seemed all right. He reached for the door latch to get out and then something tugged at his memory. Something about the crash. What was it? Ah, something must have exploded in the drone. He dimly recalled hearing a series of explosions. He reached over to the pilot window and touched it, intending to wipe some steam from it. It was hot! Yes, something had exploded in this drone.

Well, that was a good sign, maybe. It meant something could break in this place.

He looked at the gas canisters vivid in the plane lights. They looked sound. He saw that they were also armored and that all the cables to them were as well. He looked around through the ship’s windows in dismay.

This place was as armored inside as outside!

What an unpleasant view. Structural rib frames, very deep. Floor plates for loading only, having gaps on both sides of the walkway. Cross-braces. Toward the tail there were a series of holes like a beehive—ah, additional gas canister spaces; the thing was only about a third full. But enough, enough to wipe out any place it was going.

How much time did he have? He looked at his watch and it was shattered. There were no clocks in these battle planes; the clocks were all down in the console cabinets and had no faces anyway. Only lapsed time dials on the dash. He realized he wouldn’t know when radio silence ended. He tried to compute by sunrise but he didn’t know where he was beyond a few hours short of Scotland. Abruptly he realized he was maundering. Still a bit dazed?

He put the air mask on and made sure it was snug in case a gas canister had cracked in the crash, which he doubted. He checked to see whether Terl’s blast gun was still there. Yes, fallen on the floor. He might need it to try to cut cables. He put it in his belt and got out of the plane.

The thunder of these motors was deafening. Arctic wind curled in at the door. The night lay like a black pit below them.

He examined the gas canisters. No, the plane hadn’t even touched them. Nothing could touch them, from the looks of it. They were covered with the crud of extreme age. He found a half-obliterated date, a Psychlo date. These things dated from the original attack! Spares? Not used in that attack? No, another date. They had been refilled about twenty-five years later. The hope that they were expended died. They were live, all right.

Where were the controls of this thing? Ah, way up forward. Best look at those. There just might be a chance that he could change settings and, in extremis, simply pull the wires loose.

He walked up along the plates. His plane’s lights were bright, even up front.

There was the setting box. A “preset,” and there was the console one set the preset plates in. Fat lot of good the console was. Like a stamping machine. He looked at the preset box. One usually fed preset plates into the side and latched the box. Here, too. But this one?

It was armored.

It had a keyhole. He looked around, but there was no key left behind.

Cables? All armored. And they even went into the preset box with an armored connection.

Crud was all around. Lord, this thing was old! It was only clean around the preset box. He supposed they had cleaned it up to set it.

A vague feeling of unease troubled him. Completely aside from his intentness on stopping this drone, there was something odd in this place. He looked down toward the plane. The deep recesses between the frames were in complete darkness.

Zzt, unseen in a recess not six feet away, crouched back in desperation. His wits were racing. What did he know about Tolneps? Shortly after he had graduated from Mechanics College on Psychlo, he had done a duty tour on Archiniabes where the company had mines. It was in this universe. The system star was the double star he sometimes saw in winter on this planet; the smaller star of the “dumbbell” had a weight so dense that a half cubic inch of it here would weigh one ton. A minesite had been wiped out utterly by a Tolnep raid. They came from somewhere near the star cluster he often saw here. They had mastered time control and could hold it frozen and their ships made long piratical voyages. The company had analyzed several of their dead bodies. What did he remember about them? What weakness? He could think only of strengths. Their bite was deadly poison. They had a body density comparable to iron. They were immune to Psychlo gas. They couldn’t be killed with an ordinary blast gun. Weaknesses, weaknesses, weaknesses? If he didn’t recall them he would never get out of this alive. Never.

This one was walking back down past him now. He shrank against the ship skin. It didn’t see him here in the darkness.

Then he remembered. Their eyesight! That was why they always wore face masks. They saw in infrared only and had to have a filter plate. They went totally blind when subjected to shorter wavelength light and they could be killed only with ultraviolet weapons. They were intensely allergic to cold and had a body heat of around two hundred degrees, or was it three hundred? No matter, he was on to it. It was eyesight. Without its faceplate that creature would be blind.

Zzt planned carefully. The instant he got a chance, he would knock off the faceplate, leap forward, and claw the thing’s eyes out, somehow avoiding the poison teeth. Zzt’s paw slid down to the side of his boot and he got out his trusty big wrench. He could throw it like a projectile. Don’t hit the body, hit the side of the mask!

Zzt then drew from his breast pocket the small round mirror with its long handle that he used to look in the back of connections or the underside of bearings. He carefully extended the mirror around the edge of the frame, praying to the crap nebula the thing wouldn’t notice it. He began to watch the creature.

Jonnie found it very hard to walk in the rolling drone. The floor plates were not meant for walking and had gaps on both sides.

He went clear to the back end of the drone, quite a walk in itself. He looked at the strange honeycomb. It was bottle racks for additional load. He crawled in the entry port. Maybe some cables or something overlooked would be in there. He could barely get through the port and wondered how a Psychlo could, until he realized it was just for canister loading of the racks. Clumsy. Just racks. Bad design. The ports were toward the center and it was only blank bulkhead on either side. Nothing else here.

He went back toward the forward end. He stopped just beyond the ship. He thought very hard. He could see nothing that could be pulled apart, nothing that could be blasted apart. He could even blow up his ship in here and nothing would happen.

No controls. The drone was not made to be flown but just set and launched. Not even the remote Terl had shown him would do anything now.

Rolling like a huge ungainly drunk, the thing continued on its way with death in its jaws. Insensate, invulnerable.

He wasn’t seeing so well again. Blood had started flowing when he crawled into the hole back there and he’d knocked his mask. He lifted his hands to the mask, turning sideways to lessen the blast from the door. He was reaching for the edge of his jacket to wipe it off.

With the impact of a bullet the mask was hit!

It flew from his hand.

Something had almost broken his left thumb.

There was motion about thirty feet away.

Mountain training and a hunter’s life had left nothing wanting in Jonnie’s reactions.

The action of dropping to one knee, drawing, and firing the blast gun did not take more than a third of a second.

He fired at the mass that had begun to come at him. The shots drove it back with sheer force.

Again and again he fired.

The thing, whatever it was, moved back into the cover of the rib frames near the preset.

There was something or someone in here with him. He had walked right past it twice when he went to the preset box.

9

Jonnie protested a little at not heeding his instincts earlier. He had felt some presence. That was the worst part of wearing air masks. It denied one’s sense of smell. And he could smell it now. Despite the cold air and the rust motes Jonnie could smell a Psychlo.

He rose cautiously, holding the gun, and backed toward his plane to get a bit more distant. A Psychlo was pretty strong stuff not only to smell but to deal with in any wrestling match. He recalled having to wait for Thor before he could approach within arm’s length of Terl. Psychlos could crush one with ease. Which Psychlo was this? Did he know him?

Zzt, pressed up against the skin, was trying to keep from vomiting with contempt and disgust. Only what it would do to his breathe-mask prevented him.

It wasn’t the blast gun shots. Yes, those that hit had bruised him and thrown him back, and a few feet closer, they might have disabled him.

It was his own reaction to change. Here he had been in abject funk and all the while it was only the animal. Terl’s animal!

A surge of hatred and fury followed his nausea. He almost emerged from the recess and plowed straight in. But a blast gun stung. And the dumb twit didn’t even have it on penetration, only on blast. Typical.

That this animal had subjected him to such terror he could not forgive. Why, he had nearly killed it once on the tractor with a remote. He really should have killed it. He should have taken a blast rifle out that day. Who would have noticed in all that fire?

Nothing but the animal! A puny, soft, undersized, slug-white, stupid animal had scared him like that! He quivered with rage. His nausea faded.

Desire for information overrode his kill lust at this moment. Maybe this was some new plot of Terl’s. Damn Terl!

Zzt got himself under control enough to speak. “Did Terl send you?”

Jonnie tried to place the voice. Hard to do the way they talked through a face mask. The masks had sound amplification patches on their sides but voices got muffled, low as they were. He could ask; Psychlos were very arrogant.

“Who are you?” said Jonnie.

“You went through all that at the tractor and you don’t even remember who I am! Stupid dimwit. Answer me! Did Terl send you?”

Zzt! The times Terl had muttered and rumbled on about Zzt! Jonnie had his own score to settle with him.

He couldn’t resist it. “I came to bust up the machinery,” said Jonnie.

Another Psychlo might have laughed. Not Zzt. “That goes without doubt, animal! Answer me or I’ll—”

“You’ll what?” said Jonnie. “Step out and get killed? This blaster is set on penetration now.” Jonnie was slowly pacing backward to the battle plane. He edged around it. He got up on its step and opened the door and got out the assault rifle with radiation bullets. He cocked it and, when he had it ready to fire, put the blast gun back in his belt and began to walk up the corridor again.

Zzt had gone silent.

Jonnie tried to step sideways far enough to angle a shot into a recess as soon as Zzt spoke again. Then he paused. Zzt was the master mechanic of the compound, the transport chief in fact. He would know far more about this drone than anyone else.

“How’d you get yourself trapped aboard here?” said Jonnie.

“Terl!” It was practically a scream. “The ———” and there followed a string of Psychlo profanity that went on for minutes.

Jonnie waited it out. When it finally subsided into mere rumblings, Jonnie said, “So you want to get off. Just tell me how to land this and you can get off.”

There followed a new string of Psychlo obscenities, so violent that Jonnie began to be convinced. Finally, “There isn’t any way to change it or land it—” A pause, almost hopefully then, “Did Terl give you the keys to the preset?”

“No. Can’t it be blasted open?”

Apathy. “No.”

“Can’t you tear out the cables?”

“That would just crash this thing, and you can’t do that either. They’re armored with molecular lamination metal. He didn’t give you the keys.” It was a groan. Then savage: “You dimwit! Why didn’t you get the keys from him before you came out here?”

“He was a bit tied up,” said Jonnie. Then, “You better tell me what not to do so I just don’t stop its motors.”

“There aren’t any nots either,” said Zzt. He was feeling sick again from the rolling of the drone.

Jonnie pulled far over to the side. He was wondering whether he could send some ricochets from the frame into the recess. He couldn’t get over far enough. The frames were pointed-edged for strength and the edges angled out.

So Zzt was no help. Jonnie backed away toward the plane. He was going back for the copilot air mask. The Arctic chill was freezing his face. He glanced at the remains of the one knocked out of his hand. His thumb still ached.

Zzt had thrown a wrench. It was still imbedded in the side of the mask. If that had hit him in the head—

A wrench? Wait. What could one do with a wrench?

Jonnie picked up the wrench. Typically Psychlo, it was heavy as lead. It could open up to take a twelve-inch-diameter nut, a small nut in Psychlo machinery. Quite a weapon.

The second he started to straighten up from retrieving the wrench, Zzt tried to charge.

The gun was off target. Jonnie squeezed the trigger and shots flamed up the passageway. Zzt dove back. He wasn’t hit or he would have gone into a pale green explosion from radiation bullets.

Jonnie eased back to the plane and got the other air mask, checked its valves, and put it on. It worked okay.

Zzt was scrambling around on the floor, trying to find his mirror. It had become wedged in a loose plate. A loose plate?

Zzt used the mirror to check where the animal was. Then he got to work with his talons and a small metal ruler he always carried to pry up the fifty-pound plate. It was hard going, but what a projectile it would make!

The lethal drone roared on toward Scotland.

10

Jonnie held the wrench in his hand. He hefted it thoughtfully. Certainly, in setting up this drone to fire, mechanics would have to get into something. And they’d have to service something if it were ever to be fired again.

Locked, armored preset box. Yes, but that was just a control box. He had seen nothing else that took a key.

He was finding it hard to think. It was cold! These ancient Air Force flying suits were supposed to be electrically warmed, but they had not been able to rig any batteries and the originals hadn’t been made for a shelf life of a thousand years. The blood from his cut forehead kept messing up his faceplate quite in addition to the way it kept misting. What was the temperature where they were flying? A power zoom to get up to freezing, that was for sure.

This wrench . . .

He caught a flicker of movement up toward the front of the ship and fired a warning shot.

Two problems. No, three. Zzt, Nup and a Mark 32 on top, and how to disable this drone!

Old Staffor used to say he was “too smart.” A lot of village people had thought that. He wasn’t feeling very smart now.

He knew he should get rid of Zzt. But firing shots in this armored interior was not just dangerous to Zzt. It was dangerous to himself. All these frames sent every shot madly caroming about, and twice now, one had whistled past his own ears and another had hit his plane on rebound.

Suppose Zzt were a puma. How would he go about killing it? Well, one didn’t walk up to a puma; one waited for the puma to spring. No, now suppose Zzt were a bear in a cave. That was a more fitting example. Walk into a cave with a bear in it? Suicide.

He thought of setting a time fuse on a limpet and pitching it up there, getting in his plane, and depending on its armor to protect him. But there was a limit to the way magnetic grips held and he might blow up his own plane into an unusable state. He wished he had a grenade, but all the grenades they had found were duds and they hadn’t worked out how to use them. He even thought of taking one of the fuel or ammunition cartridges—of which he had plenty for the plane—throwing it up there, and shooting into it. It would explode, that was for sure. But one cartridge might not kill Zzt. Psychlos were very tough, very tough indeed. Zzt had once beaten Terl, he had heard, and Zzt truly hated him—in fact, had almost killed him once. No, he was not going to try any stunt of walking up there even with an assault rifle firing. He did not know how deep that recess was or even what recess Zzt was in, and Zzt might very well be armed still.

Nup he had nullified for the moment.

Lord, it was cold.

One thing at a time. His job was not Zzt or Nup. It was to stop this drone. He had better get awfully smart. Fast!

Because of his misting and bloodstained faceplate, he had not spotted the tiny mechanic’s mirror that watched him. He got busy untangling the problem of this drone.

Where Psychlos couldn’t use a molecular parting and resealing tool, they used nuts and bolts. And he was sure that this armor wouldn’t yield to a “metal knife,” as they called the tool in Psychlo mechanic’s slang. He had gathered from Zzt that this was molecular lamination, layer after layer of different but binding metals. Good. So somewhere here they had used nuts.

He caught a flick of motion and fired another shot. The bullet ricocheted three times and went whining out the door.

Maybe one of these floor plates . . . He laughed suddenly. Squarely in front of the ship, in a shadow the lights left between the skids, was a floor plate held down by nuts!

He reduced the jaw size of the wrench and got down between the skids. Another small adjustment and he had the size. There were eight nuts. They came off very easily—these had been removed recently. He put the nuts on one of the skid tops that had an inset groove. Heavy, they stayed there despite the roll.

One of the plane skids was on the far edge of the plate. He pounded it with the heel of the wrench and it loosened. He pried the plate up with the lip of the wrench. He intended just to set it aside, but as it came loose, the drone rolled and it went sliding out of his numb hands, through the door and into the screaming wind and emptiness. Who cared?

He got out a torch and shone it down into the blackness.

He was looking at the top of the main motor drive!

The housing was as big as a one-story house. It made him realize that the whole underside of the drone was motors and additional gas canister storage. What tons and tons and tons of lethal gas this carried! The canisters glowed like monster fish in the darkness. But the housing!

Jonnie knew these drives in miniature. They were space translation cubicles, mostly empty but served by an enormous number of points that jutted into them. Each point had its own coordinate message, and these points had to be cleaned.

There must be an inspection and maintenance plate on this housing!

With a wary look up the long passageway, he slid down and braced his feet on the structural support members of the housing. He played the light around.

It was hard to keep an eye on the corridor from this position, and he alternated looks at the housing with looks at the corridor. Maybe he really ought to work out how to get rid of Zzt before he went on with this. He had to duck down to see the housing. But doing something with Zzt might put an end to himself and he reminded himself that too many lives—in fact the only human lives left—depended on him. Courage aside, he mustn’t risk his neck. Bear in a cave. He decided he could chance it and ducked down.

There it was!

A huge inspection plate.

Held down by four twelve-inch nuts.

But what an unhandy place. Handy maybe for a Psychlo mechanic to reach down with huge long arms. Not handy for him.

He banged off another shot up the passageway. He ducked down and adjusted the wrench. He gripped the first nut.

Yikes, it was tight. No one-hand job with this big wrench. Psychlos didn’t know their own strength when putting nuts on.

He inspected the corridor again. He had to lay down the assault rifle to do this. He made sure the place he put it braced it reasonably so it wouldn’t slide out the door. He still had his revolver in its holster.

He eased down and, with two hands on the wrench, legs braced, heaved on the nut.

It turned!

He had learned enough about mechanics not to just undo and take off one nut. He’d find the last one wedged tight. So loosen all four about half a turn each. . . .

He had number two loosened.

He was straining at number three.

“What are you doing?” roared Zzt.

Jonnie came up. Zzt was still in his recess up there.

“You dimwitted, stupid slug!” roared Zzt. “If you monkey with those motors this thing will just crash!”

Thank you, Zzt, said Jonnie to himself.

“If you leave it alone, this thing will just land by itself in two or three days!” howled Zzt.

Actually, Zzt was getting panicky. There was something very peculiar about those shots the animal kept sending up the passageway. Right now the exhale valve on his breathe-mask had sparked slightly. For some minutes he had been aware of little tiny sparks around him. He had thought they were dust motes at first and then thought something was wrong with his eyes, that he was seeing tiny molecular flashes in his head. But this last exhale had actually sparked. Was there radiation around here? Was that animal throwing uranium dust around? Wait, were those slugs or was that gun he used operated by radiation?

He had decided he better act, regardless of consequences. Yes, there was another tiny flash when the mask exhaled spent breathe-gas into the air!

“You’ve got a mask!” roared Zzt. “This kill-gas won’t blow back in the drone. Just wait until it lands!” The stupid, filthy animal. Damn Terl!

“How about other people down there?” said Jonnie.

That shut Zzt up for the moment. He could not work out how something happening to somebody else had any bearing on what one would do for himself.

“Leave those motors alone!” screamed Zzt.

The Psychlo was getting hysterical. Maybe he would charge. Jonnie waited, rifle in hand. No, Zzt was not going to charge. He better get back to work on these nuts. He laid down the assault rifle and ducked. He took a full turn on nut number one. He came up to be sure Zzt hadn’t moved.

The fifty-pound floor plate, sailing in a deadly spin, traveling with the speed of a cannonball, struck a skid strut, glanced, and smashed into the back of Jonnie’s head.

The assault rifle flew from his clutching hand and went out into the dark. Holding somehow onto consciousness he fumbled for the revolver. There was nothing but darkness in front of his eyes.